WaIIy wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:41:49 -0700, "Bill in
Co."
wrote:

WaIIy wrote:
On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:35:38 -0700, "Bill in
Co."
wrote:

WaIIy wrote:

I have the option to clone the drive or
copy it. I
copied it to an existing partition on my
second
internal drive.

I think the message for copying reads
something like
"copy a partition" so I just copied the
whole C
drive which is one partition to
an existing partition on my second drive
(which has
2 partitions).

OK, then presumably Casper handles it behind
the
scenes by first deleting that partition and
then
creating it WHEN it copies the source drive
partition
to the destination drive. (In contrast,
using Boot
It NG, which
does less hand holding, *you* must FIRST
mark that
space as "Unallocated" on the destination
drive (or
delete the partition there), and only THEN
will it
do the partition copy operation.

In my case, I copied (not cloned) the C drive
to a
partition (D) on my destination drive. I
have D and E
on my destination drive.


The existing partition I copied to was and
is 37
gigs, the copy takes up 27 gigs

That's because the pre-existing partition
there was
deleted in the copy partition operation (and
effectively recreated as this new and
smaller one).

"Was and is" The destination drive had
partition D of
37 gigs. The copy was 27 gigs. The
partition is
still 37 gigs.
Casper didn't touch it.

Then it's not a true "partition copy" in the
normal
usage of the term, since the source and
destination
partitions are NOT identical. If what you
said is
true, then apparently it's only copying the
data
contents of what's inside the partition, and
is NOT
making identical partitions. (I'm talking
about the
size of the partition here, NOT the total size
of the
data inside!. For example, my main C:
partition is
40 GB in size, but only half of it is in use
at this
point (about 20 GB of data).


I agree, the partitions are not identical.

The stuff in them seems to be, although my copy
is not
bootable from the outset.

I "think" "possibly" it can be made bootable,
but not
quite sure.

It's gotta be. What about when you copy a
single-partitioned system disk to a partition on
a second
drive.

No. Only when the MBR and system files etc.
reside in the proper sectors on a drive where the
boot loader expects to find them is anything
bootable. Only specific, identifiable areas of a
disk can be used to boot from; and that's where
the boot loader looks for them. It does not
search for them; it goes to an address on the disk
and if the correct data isn't there - no boot.
"Copy" can not create a bootable disk.


It's not an image. If it ain't bootable, what
good is it
as a backup!?

An "image" is not bootable either; ever. Clones
are bootable.
And, the reasons for backing up are not
primarily to back up the operating system. In a
catastrophe, those can be rebuilt from the
original CDs if necessary but the user's DATA,
pics, letters, email addresses, financial data,
anything a progam can save, can NOT be recreated
from anything but some sort of a backup. That is
the main target to be protected on any production
machine. Data is much more important on the scale
than is the operating system, although the OS is
still high on the list for a complete solution.
I do understand some don't care about their
data and that's fine, it's a matter of preference
and needs. I have such a machine myself; it's a
sandbox used strictly for testing so most of the
time all that gets backed up on it is the OS.
Nothing else on it is of any value once I'm done
testing things.

Cheers,

Twayne